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Lichtenstein's "Whaam!"
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280 posts in this topic

On 3/26/2019 at 3:13 AM, drdroom said:

This is my all-time favorite Lichtenstein. It's unique in being a direct self-commentary and also in being a perceptive bit of fan commentary --Roy apparently noticed the striking similarities between the X-Men and the Doom Patrol and decided to merge them. Roy copies comics, comics copy each other. Though in fact, it may have been pure coincidence that each company came out with an oddball team led by a man in a wheelchair at virtually the same time.

Oh God. Now Mark Evanier is going to go on a rant attacking Lichetnstein.

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On 3/3/2023 at 11:36 PM, tth2 said:

I think there's a high degree of correlation between the degree of boredom in the OA forum and the likelihood of a Lichtenstein discussion breaking out.  

Things are kind of slow in the OA forum now that the Heritage auction is over, so here's a little chum to get the water churning again...

Did Lichtenstein create art or copy it? A new film stokes the controversy.

I hear the key to successfully persuading others to your position is to argue more loudly and stridently.

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On 4/6/2023 at 9:23 PM, tth2 said:

Things are kind of slow in the OA forum now that the Heritage auction is over, so here's a little chum to get the water churning again...

Did Lichtenstein create art or copy it? A new film stokes the controversy.

I hear the key to successfully persuading others to your position is to argue more loudly and stridently.

What keeps popping up is a Washington Post notice requiring purchase.

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On 4/7/2023 at 9:55 AM, Rick2you2 said:

What keeps popping up is a Washington Post notice requiring purchase.

That's weird, usually you can read a number of free articles each month.

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On 11/28/2018 at 11:08 AM, delekkerste said:

My pal, comics historian Arlen Schumer, on the Lichtenstein criticism (cribbed from another thread from several years ago; needless to say, I agree with him):

Here we go again! Dean, the "blame" for Russ Heath's old-age situation should be placed where it belongs: not at Lichtenstein, who made legitimate fine art out of Heath's found-art, commercial panel (the very definition of pop art), but at the very comic companies who used Heath as a full-time freelancer, and never paid royalties or benefits or anything that longtime company employers should provide workers like Heath who gave their best years, blood, sweat and tears to them. Instead, we get the usual boogeyman-blaming of Lichtenstein. OK, so maybe back in his early years Lichtenstein should've credited his sources (his Estate credits them in shows & catalogs now)--but no one was doing that back then, or in the early years of music sampling either. But in NO WAY does Lichtenstein owe ANY of his comic book sources ANYTHING. Blame DC and Marvel Comics for never doing the right thing by their artists or writers.

Again, let's separate what RL "should've" done from what he "had" to do, and still "has" to do, legally, ethically and morally. Led Zeppelin didn't credit the blues songs they "covered" for their 1st album in 1969 (credited as Page-Plant "originals") until they were hauled into court decades later. 

Roy Lichtenstein's work is the VERY DEFINITION of pop art itself: the idea that everyday objects and motifs/ideas/forms from our commercial and popular culture environment could be legitimate areas of artistic study and exploration as valid as the more traditional ones of the "natural" world (landscapes and still lifes) and the inner imagination (abstract expressionism). Lichtenstein chose the world of comic art for his particular pop art, and produced a body of work that turned out to be his life's work. Through his artistic transformation of his "found" art subject matter (what Pop shared with the Dadaist/surrealists like Duchamp)--not the pejorative of "tracing comic panels," "ripping them off," etc.--Lichtenstein explored many of the most classic artistic subjects of culture, society, relationships, image, identity, perception--and art itself, in a complete turning inside-out of the art-imitates-life-imitates-art moebius strip that both confounded and won over art critics, and is the source of a kind of humor in his work.

When you see Lichtenstein's interpretations versus the originals, he wasn't very good and didn't make them better.

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On 4/7/2023 at 10:52 PM, PeterPark said:

When you see Lichtenstein's interpretations versus the originals, he wasn't very good and didn't make them better.

It's not about making them "better".  We're not talking about John Severin inking Richard Ayers' pencils to make the resulting images better.

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On 4/7/2023 at 10:09 AM, Bronty said:

If the work is still pizzing people off 60 years later, then I hate to say it, but he did something right.   (shrug)

If that's the measure then Milli Vanilli only has to wait about 25 years or so to join him. lol 

 

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On 4/7/2023 at 11:20 PM, comix4fun said:

If that's the measure then Milli Vanilli only has to wait about 25 years or so to join him. lol 

 

Milli Vanilli were actually way ahead of their time.  Every big name so-called "DJ" today basically just follows their model.  The mistake that the real creators of MV made was trying to hide the fact that the producers were the real stars and the singers were just another instrument, no different from keyboards or guitars.  

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On 4/7/2023 at 2:43 PM, tth2 said:

Milli Vanilli were actually way ahead of their time.  Every big name so-called "DJ" today basically just follows their model.  The mistake that the real creators of MV made was trying to hide the fact that the producers were the real stars and the singers were just another instrument, no different from keyboards or guitars.  

Yeah it was the fraud that killed it.
The two guys standing behind the microphones didn't do the singing that was the scandal. They stole the voices of actual singers and passed it off as legit. 

Wait...they might actually be a good analogy for Roy after all. 

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On 4/7/2023 at 11:04 AM, tth2 said:

It's not about making them "better".  We're not talking about John Severin inking Richard Ayers' pencils to make the resulting images better.

What I mean is, his copies look awfully rough next to the originals, making his version almost childlike. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy but traced over with clean lines anyway. I used to like him more until I learned where everything came from and saw what he did with his source material. The respect went away very quickly.

All that said, have any of the original panels he swiped come up for sale? I'd expect those would do well as even the comics containing the panels gain more interest.

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On 4/8/2023 at 4:14 AM, comix4fun said:

The two guys standing behind the microphones didn't do the singing that was the scandal. They stole the voices of actual singers and passed it off as legit. 

And Audrey Hepburn didn't do any of the actual singing in "My Fair Lady".  

Honestly, to this day I don't get why the Milli Vanilli scandal was such a big deal.  It was bad plastic music produced for a bad plastic audience that was perceived to be so shallow that it couldn't accept songs sung by unattractive singers. 

The only thing I fault the producers for is getting "attractive" front men who couldn't sing at all.  It's not like there's a shortage in this world of good looking people who can sing passably.  To wit, every boy band in the world. 

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On 4/8/2023 at 9:38 AM, tth2 said:

And Audrey Hepburn didn't do any of the actual singing in "My Fair Lady".  

Honestly, to this day I don't get why the Milli Vanilli scandal was such a big deal.  It was bad plastic music produced for a bad plastic audience that was perceived to be so shallow that it couldn't accept songs sung by unattractive singers. 

The only thing I fault the producers for is getting "attractive" front men who couldn't sing at all.  It's not like there's a shortage in this world of good looking people who can sing passably.  To wit, every boy band in the world. 

And if Audrey Hepburn put together an album, claimed she was the actual singer, toured the world collecting money from people claiming she was the actual singer, or was anything other than an entirely fictional character for a motion picture....it would be analogous. 

But I think Milli Vanilli was a scandal because, up until then (and ever since), bad singers who were pretty enough to front a group had backup singers and a REALLY LOUD BAND to obscure them. Or, later, they had auto-tune, but underneath it were their own voices. 

When the real singers were revealed it came off as less "production values" and more "scam". 

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